History

Peer-Reviewed. Peer review is the evaluation of an article or book by one or more scholars. It establishes a process for editing and verifying one's research by having qualified members of the same profession review the article or book in order to maintain standards of quality and provide credibility. 

Primary Sources. A primary source is an original source or artifact that provides evidence of a person, culture, historical event, or time period. This might exist as a document, diary, oral account, manuscript, autobiography, recording, architectural structure, or work of art. These types of primary sources were created by people with direct knowledge and experience of an event, or to serve a specific purpose during their lifetime. Primary sources are typically housed in museums and archives. 

Scholarly Credibility. A scholarly article or book that contains content written by experts in a particular field of study. Some details to look for when determining whether a source is credible are as follows:

• Are all sources used thoroughly cited?
• Are the sources they cited used by other academic institutions?
• Was it peer-reviewed prior to publication? 
• Where was the source published? 
• What else has the author written?
• Is the author a reputable scholar?

For more information on source credibility, please see PPLD's LibGuide on Information and Media Literacy here.

Secondary Sources. A secondary source of information is a document or recording that was created by an individual who did not experience first-hand or participate in the historical event being discussed or in the formation of an artifact. When conducting research, secondary sources typically provide scholarly information about a select topic that has been analyzed, interpreted, and/or evaluated. Thus, this source type does not substitute an original event or artifact, but assists in learning more about them.

Anyone can publish a website or webpage without it being evaluated for accuracy or quality of information. Reviews by peers, scholars, editors, and publishers are not often applied to websites. The following evaluation criteria should be applied when viewing a website:

• Authorship. Is the author identified? What are the author's credentials? For example, does the site include the author's position and institutional or organizational affiliation? Is the URL for an educational institution (.edu) or government agency (.gov)? 
• Accuracy. Can the data be verified from other sources? Does the author have an obvious bias? Check the facts.
• Audience. Is the site intended for scholars, professionals, or students?
• Currency. Does the website include the date it was created and/or updated? Are the links current?
• Coverage. Does the site state its intended scope? Is it designed to cover an entire subject, or to give detailed information on one aspect?
• Relative Value. How does it compare to other sources of similar information? Are there other more accurate or complete sources - possibly in print format or a library database? Even with all of the useful information online, sometimes the most reliable resources are print books on the shelf at the library.

For additional information on detailed criteria that can be applied when conducting research on the internet, see PPLD's LibGuide on Information and Media Literacy here.

A keyword search looks for one or more complete words that are contained anywhere in a record, including: titles, people, places, notes, abstracts, summaries, descriptions, and subjects. This type of search is a good substitute for a subject search when you don't know the authorized subject heading form. You can enter words in upper or lower case, and if you use multiple words you can enter them in any order.

Your search results can contain a range of items related to your keyword(s) search:

• Words that appear in the title
• Words that describe the subject matter
• Author's name
• Format or language
• Year of publication
• Name(s) or publishers and/or distributors of the item
• If the item is an article, then you can search for the name of the magazine or journal in which the article appears
• For recorded music and movies: artist, actor, or director name

Subject headings describe the content of each item in a database. Use these headings to find relevant items on the same topic. Searching by subject headings (a.k.a., descriptors) is the most precise way to search databases.

What you need to know about subject headings, also commonly referred to as subheadings:

• Pre-defined "controlled vocabulary" words used to describe the content of each item (such as a book or journal article) in a database. 
• Less flexible when conducting a search. You need to know the exact controlled vocabulary term. Results will very based on the topic.
• A database will look for subjects only in the subject heading or descriptor field, where the most relevant words appear.
• If your search produces too many results, then consider using subheadings to focus on one aspect of the broader subject. A subheading is a division subordinate to a main heading or top level subject.

A phrase search uses quotation marks to allow an exact match to the phrase searched. This can be a title or keyword search, and can include two or more words. For example:

• "consumer reports"
• "criminal justice"
• "regional history"
• "george washington"

Boolean operators allow you to group, include, or exclude certain terms in your search. You can use these operators:

Truncation allows you to search for a term and its variations by entering a minimum of the first three letters of the term followed by a question mark symbol (?) or an asterisk (*). 

Examples:

Wildcards are special characters used to represent additional characters in a search term. They are useful when you are unsure of spelling, when there are alternate spellings, or when you only know part of a term. You can use these two wildcards:

Pound sign (#): The pound sign, also called a number sign or hash mark, represents a single character.

Example:

• A search for the term wom#n will return items whose record contains the terms woman or women.
• A search for the term adverti#e will return items whose record contains the terms advertise or advertize.

Question mark (?): The question mark represents any number of additional characters. Include a number if you know the maximum number of characters the wildcard will replace. 

Example: 

• A search for the term anders?n will return items whose record contains the terms anderson or andersen.
• A search for the term bu?2er will return items whose record contains the terms burner or butler.

Stop words are frequently occurring, insignificant words that appear in a database record, article, or web page.

Common stop words include: a, an, the, in, of , on, are, be, if, into, which

Why stop words matter?

• Boolean operators are not recognized as stop words when capitalized. They are search commands.
• Many databases ignore common words from your search statement. If included, the database might return too many results.
• Know which words to include or exclude from your search.
• Databases can recognize common stop words when they are part of the controlled vocabulary of subject headings and descriptors. In this case, consider using quotation marks. For example, a search conducted in title keyword for out "of" africa, retrieves the title: Out of Africa
• Check the Help screen on your database for a complete list of stop words.
• Search for your terms in specific fields: author, title, subject/descriptor.